Abdul-Hakim Murad: the churches and Bosnia
Abdal-Hakim Murad – The Churches and the Bosnian war This is something br. Mas’ud Khan posted to his website a couple of weeks ago, which I only just got round to looking at for...
Author: Matthew Smith
“Inshallah” on the BBC: a cultural cringe?
Melanie Phillips’s Diary » The Beeb’s cultural cringe Melanie Phillips reproduces emails one Brian Gilbert sent to her (not sure who he is; there is a film director by that name, but it may...
“Something remarkable” happening in Glasgow
Guardian Unlimited: Something remarkable Robina Qureshi on what you might not hear about the situation in Glasgow vis-a-vis the resettled asylum seekers: the fact that the community has rallied around them, to the extent...
Toynbee: the press’s hypocrisy
Guardian Unlimited: Our press, the worst in the west, demoralises us all Polly Toynbee (someone with whom I agree vary rarely) on the hypocritical media condemnations of the sailors who were captured by Iran....
Do blogs need codes of conduct?
O'Reilly Radar: Draft Blogger's Code of Conduct I'm really quite surprised that it's taken the recent "Kathy Sierra affair" ([1], [2]) for the blogging community to get around to drawing up a "code of...
Windows Vista: slow, slow, slow
I'm just typing my first ever blog entry on a computer running Windows Vista, on my uncle's new Dell. And really, it's the most appallingly slow piece of software I've ever used. (I'm using...
A sentimental journey
Last week, as I said in my last-but-one post, I went with my family to Wales, specifically Tywyn (pronounced Towin'), the same small town I went to with them for a few days last...
Qat habit might ruin Sana’a
BBC NEWS – From Our Own Correspondent: Yemen’s khat habit soaks up water This is a BBC report about the qat (or khat) habit, which uses 40% of Yemen’s scarce water supply and is...
Marriage visa age to rise
BBC NEWS | Politics | Marriage visa age to rise to 21 The Government have announced that they are raising the minimum age for acquiring a marriage visa to the UK from 18 to...
WHO advocates male circumcision
BBC NEWS | Health | WHO agrees HIV circumcision plan The World Health Organisation today recommended that the circumcision of boys be used as a means of preventing AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, although obviously...
What’s a secure password?
The other day I started getting eBay messages in reply to messages I had supposedly sent out. The messages sent under my name claimed to be from a company exporting electronic equipment from China, complete with email address (not mine) and a phone number. I sent a couple of messages to those who’d contacted me telling them that the messages were a scam and weren’t from me. (Interestingly, none of them were abusive at all; one of them told me the prices were too steep, but there were no F words or insults.)
Times: rotting in failed schools
Minette Marrin: Sentenced to rot in their failed schools (Sunday TImes) A case against another of this government’s stupid recent ideas: keeping kids in school until they’re 18. Theoretically, this is supposed to include...
Telegraph: a passport to misery
Sunday Telegraph: A passport to misery, if you ask me… Jenny McCartney, in today's Sunday Telegraph, on the bureaucratic nightmare that the British government's demand that all new passport applicants attend a face-to-face interview...
No “Shawshank Redemption” for real victims of injustice
For the wrongly jailed, there is no Shawshank Redemption ending (Guardian Unlimited) John McManus of the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation (MOJO, set up by Paddy Hill of the Birmingham Six) on the grotesque spectacle...
Wheatcroft on Tory neo-cons
Anglo-neocons are slaves to America and not serving us (Guardian Unlimited) Geoffrey Wheatcroft (The Strange Death of Tory England, Yo! Blair) on the clique of “Anglo-neocons” surrounding David Cameron whose position on the Iraq...
Anna Politkovskaya: an audience with Ramzan Kadyrov
The Guardian have been serialising extracts from the last book written by the assassinated Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya ([1], [2]). In today's G2 supplement, there is an account of her meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov,...
Olympics: the fake consultations
George Monbiot, in today's Guardian, on the fake consultations which accompany the Olympic developments in east London: chiefly, the difficulties one had to go to in order to get copies of the plans, which...
City Circle: Monolithic Communities
Last Friday night I went to a City Circle event in London entitled Independent Voices: Challenging the Myth of Monolithic Communities, addressed by two founders of dissenting ethnic organisations, namely Brian Klug of Independent Jewish Voices and Sunny Hundal of the New Generation Network (and Pickled Politics) as well as Ehsan Masood, who writes for Prospect magazine.
Jews, Muslims and free speech
Earlier this week, Leeds University cancelled a talk and a two-day workshop which was due to be delivered by the German academic and former adviser to his country's Green Party, Matthias Küntzel, on what...
Racist or not, Mr Security had to go
Last Thursday, Patrick Mercer, the Conservative party’s spokesman for “homeland security”, was sacked from David Cameron’s shadow cabinet for giving an interview to the Times. He was reacting to the establishment of a “new...